Fox News analyst Brit Hume lamented with host Bill O’Reilly on Monday night that white people can’t complain about a black President anymore without being labeled as racists.
Hume made the comments a day after he appeared on an all-white panel on “Fox News Sunday” and accused President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder of using race as “a shield and a sword.” After the appearance, he said, people on Twitter accused him of racism and bemoaned the lack of diversity on the panel.
“In other words, in order to discuss this, you have to have an African-American present,” Hume complained to O’Reilly. “But if you’re just white, then discussing this is racist.”
Hume didn’t need to defend himself to O’Reilly, who’s been on a crusade against the “grievance industry.”
The “grievance industry,” as O’Reilly explained last week, “basically says that America is not a fair nation, that the deck is stacked against minorities, women, the poor, gays, atheists, Muslims — you name it.”
He told Hume on Monday that, far from being discriminated against, Obama has benefitted from his race.
“You know, it’s — this is a tough question to pose. But if Barack Obama had been a young white senator from Illinois, I think probably Hillary Clinton would have defeated him. Is that unfair to say?” O’Reilly asked.
Hume agreed and said that Obama has received the “benefit of the doubt” more than he would have if he were white. And he said that the march toward equality produced an unfortunate trend.
“Look, one of the effects the great success of the Civil Rights movement, which was certainly a just cause, was that overwhelmingly Americans agree that blacks and other minorities should be treated equally in this country, they want to see blacks get ahead, and the effect of that is that being called a racist or labeled a racist, particularly if it’s successful, is one of the worst things that can happen to you in America,” Hume said.
“So it places a real weapon in the hands of those who would use it, particularly of those who would use it unscrupulously, which I think we’ve seen in the cases of some.”
Another great day in GOP outreach.
“But if Barack Obama had been a young white senator from Illinois, I think probably Hillary Clinton would have defeated him. Is that unfair to say?”
He’s right, but not for the reasons he thinks. If Obama had been a young white senator from Illinois, he wouldn’t have had Obama’s uniquely American life story. He wouldn’t have experienced many of the struggles that helped shape his worldview. It’s unlikely that a young white senator from Illinois would’ve had the experience of years spent as a community organizer in one of the toughest cities in America. It’s just as unlikely that a young white senator’s very existence would represent a coming together of our nation’s ugliest and oldest divide. A young white senator probably wouldn’t have fostered their faith in a black church and thus may have never picked up that unmistakable oratary style of black preachers that Obama mastered so beautifully. We are all the sum of our experiences, joys, pain, triumph, disappointment etc. Obama’s blackness had a large part in shaping his experiences and who he is. Without those experiences he probably wouldn’t have been elected president. But, I know, that’s not what Hume meant. All he was saying is that being black is some kind of super secret advantage that white people are being denied because being unable to use the “n word” is far worse than being called one.
This is just so right on, Plucky, Great comment.
One other thing - there is this belief on the right that white liberals voted for Pres. Obama simply because he’s black. The first time someone accused me of this, I was totally astonished. I voted for him because I thought he was brilliant and it would be good to have brains in the White House again. And did anyone think I would ever vote for McCain?
In the showdown between Clinton and Obama, Obama won my vote because of Hillary’s vote for war in Iran. Most of my friends, white and black, came to the same conclusion, some very reluctantly. A few still voted for Clinton for other reasons and then switched to Obama after the primaries.
Both of these guys are just using race as an excuse to explain the media’s refusal to run with conspiracy theories that find a home on Fox News. For example Benghazi? The stand down was made up. Sharyl Attkisson left because ABC wouldn’t let her pursue the conspiracy theory on prime time.
However, as I have said many times before, conservatives are unfairly accused of racism against Obama for pursuing positions they have pursued against previous Democratic presidents. Jonathan Chait, who writes for NY Magazine, has said as much. Josh Marshall recent summarized part of Chait commentary with “Republicans … are nonetheless legitimately paranoid that they’re constantly being falsely accused of racism and liberals, on the right side of the race issue, nonetheless won’t let conservatives say anything edgy without forcing it through the prism of racial offense.”
I can appreciate that the President has received some benefit from being black, but that pales (no pun intended) in comparison with the burden he has shouldered in trying to overcome the fact that he is not part of the male, white, heterosexual establishment.
Those of us who have benefitted so much from accidentally being white, heterosexual, males are often largely oblivious to our privileged status, particularly by comparison with our female, non-white, and LGBT colleagues.
But, to any reasonable observer, when a black president proposes virtually identical legislation to that previously supported in enthusiastic fashion by members of the male, white, heterosexual establishment, only to have it resoundingly denounced by those previous supporters, it takes someone with a decidedly narrow perception of fairness, let alone reality, to conclude that the opposition has more to do with policy differences than racial bias.